THF TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. [November i, 1889. 
Qcinine Profits.— We are informed that 
the amount of 184, i26m. (9,263t.). which we stated 
last week, on the authority of a German journal, to 
have been the profit of the Auerbach Quinine Works 
during the financial year 1888-9, has been the gross 
profit, and that, after deducting working expenses, &c , 
bnly a very much smaller aura remains as net profit. 
We are making further inquiries into the subject. — 
Chemist and Druggist, Aug. 30. 
Fob Owners of Steam Botleus. — It appears that 
the eucalyptus tree, besides its virtues as a dispellant 
of the malignant atmosphere in malarious localities, 
has another useful property which may bo worth the 
attention of users of steam. From the report on the 
Lucknow Horticultural Gardens just published, we 
observe that a decoction of the leaves has been found 
efficacious as a remedy lor thi incrustation of boilers. 
Experiments have been tried in England with excell- 
ent results, the method of application being as follows : 
— "A large tank is filled with leaves and small branches, 
then the water is put in and boiled or made warm by 
waste, steam. This continues till the fluid has a dark 
colour, when it is used ; say two or three gallons of 
the decoction is put into the tender and so mixes 
with the water or enters the boiler with the feed." 
The matter is now engaging the attenion of the Loco- 
motive Department.of the Bengal and North- Western 
Railway at Gorakhpur, and it is stated the trials made 
there have also shown . good .results. Apparently, how- 
ever, the application does not prevent the formation 
of scale, but causes it to come readily off the plates 
when the boilers are being washed out. — Pioneer. 
Tea-Drinking in England. — Mr. Philip Gilbert 
Hamerton, in his recently published book, " French 
and English : A Comparison," thus refers to the 
English habit of tea-drinking : — 
Another great change of custom in England, separat- 
ing her from France, is of quite modern introduction. 
There was a time when both countries were total ab- 
stainers from tea-drinking, and, so far, exactly alike; 
now England is a great tea-drinking country and 
France is not. Hero is a new subject on which they 
are not in sympathy. It may seem a trifle ; but has 
the reader ever observed Englishwomen in France 
deprived of tea or supplied with the beverage in a 
weaker condition than they like ? At such times 
they have a very low opinion of Gallic civilisation. 
Far-seeing Englishwomen who are accustomed 'o the 
continent take their own teapots with their private 
supplies, and make the indispensable decoction them- 
selves. When drinking if they feel like Christians 
in a pagan land. Is that nothing ? Does it not pro- 
duce a perceptible sense of estrangement from the 
French ? Tea-drinking has now become one of those 
immensely important customs, like smoking and coffee 
in the East, that have connected themselves with the 
amenities of human intercourse, and to brew your 
cup in the solitude of a foreign hotel is to feel 
yourself an alien. Yet how long is it since the 
English began to drink tea ? They began tasting it 
experimentally, as a few Englishmen now smoke 
hashish, about the middle of the seventeenth century. 
Compared with ale and wine, it is a novelty. The 
greatest of Englishwomen, Queen Elizabeth, 
who was of English blood by father and mother, 
and thoroughly national, never drank a cup of tea 
in her life and did her work energetically without it. 
The use of tea has produced a special meal in the 
English middle classes which is unknown in 
Franoe as it was unknown in England two 
hundred years ago. The French way of living, 
under other names, bears near resemblance to old 
English habits. The d ejcitaer & la fourchette is the early 
dinner, the dinner is the supper. The French first 
breakfast is modern, when cafe an lait is taken, but 
great numbers of French people take soup or a glass 
of white wine with a crust of bread, and many take 
nothing at all. Breakfast and tea are the peculiarly 
English meals, and they are modern. The one great 
English innovation which the French have never been 
able to accept is that of eating salty and greasy food, 
such as fried bacon, and drinking hot |and sweet tea or 
coffee at the same time. 
Local Manufacture of Cement. — In continua- 
tion of the remarks formerly made by Mr. 
John Hughes to me with reference to the pos- 
sible economical manufacture of cement in tropical 
countries, that gentleman has further informed me 
that, during a recent visit paid to the borders of 
Wales, he obtained specimens of the mortar of 
some of the more ancient of the Welsh oaBtles, 
and that he had compared them with some of 
that obtained by him — from yourselves, I rather 
think — from the ancient dams which exist so largely 
throughout Ceylon. The result of his comparison 
of both was to convince him that in neither 
case was the mortar used of any artificial com- 
position, such as are our English manufactured 
cements. It appeared certain to him that in both 
instances the lime used had been burned from 
limestone only, though of a very superior 
character, and that much of the exceptional hard- 
ness the specimens he had obtained possessed had 
been due mainly to the full vitrifaction resulting 
during centuries of time. It is more than doubt- 
ful, Mr. Hughes thinks, if any artificial pro- 
cess can ever succeed in rivalling the hardness 
attained as the result of suoh long periods of 
slow vitrifaction due to atmospheric and other 
influences. — London Cor. 
Alleged Existence of Rich Gold Mines in Pahang, 
Malay Peninsula.- The Indian Agriculturist states 
An Australian digger named Sefton visited among 
other piaces, the State of Pahang, and there saw 
the natives engaged in alluvial digging with the 
most primitive appliances, which, however, yielded 
them vast quantities of gold. He wondered where 
all the gold came from, and after a oareful search 
traced it up to Raub, where he avers is situated 
by far the richest mine in the world. He describes 
the mine " as an immense slate dyke increased in all 
directions with quartz veins from an inch in thickness 
to the diameter of a fine thread, and showing gold 
throughout freely. He followed this dyke for miles 
in places tracing the gold in lines along the 
surface for several yards at a time. Its breadth he 
could not possibly determine, but in places thought 
it might be measured by hu'idreds of feet," Sefton 
then interviewed the Raja who said that there was 
plenty of gold a little below the surface. The stone 
was too hurd to work with the native hoe, and the 
Malavs were content with what they found which was 
more than sufficient for their wants. It would seem 
that these people were almost as simple in regard to 
the value of gold as the people of America when first 
visited by the Spaniard. We are told that at Sefton'e 
request " the Raja supplied men to get out about a 
ton of stone. This was taken from one of the seams 
pointed out by Sefton and was dollied up in a shallow 
wooden block with a bamboo pole shod with iron. 
The result was 102 oz. of gold, and Sefton declares 
there was almost as much more left in the coarsely 
pounded refuse. This gold Sefton sold in Singapore 
at £4-2s per ounce and sent the dollars back to the 
Raja." In Sandhurst and BalUrat in Victoria, there 
are mines that pay fair dividends on 8 penny-weights 
to the ton, and the surprise of the adventurous 
Australian can easily he imagined at obtainiug 102 oz 
of gold from the ton by the roughest appliances, and 
gold worth not the regulation price of £3-17-6 per oz. 
but £4-2s which, we believe, is the second highest 
price ever paid. The i cult of the discovery has been 
the formation of a syndicate, composed, as we are 
informed, of some leading Australians, and eight 
Cabinet Ministers, and we presume Sefton and his 
adventurous oolleagues. They have acquired twenty 
square miles of gold bearing country, embracing a lode 
six miles in length, the price paid for the concession 
being £320,000, of which £10,600 is in cash, and the 
balance in shares. The reports of the richness of this 
mine, and the discovery of rich auriferous country in 
Borneo have naturally attracted the attention of 
speculators to those regions, which are expected to yield 
wealth surpassing the dreams of avarice, 
